Posts from the ‘work’ Category

Last month, my highest profile article for some years came out, on the long term relationship between global temperature and the fossil record. It received quite a bit of press attention. I wrote a popular piece in The Conversation describing my view of its significance.

There was good press coverage by TIME and The Guardian. Nature covered it too, and included some harsher, but fair, comments.

A number of other websites took up the press release, giving it decent worldwide coverage. Some of these had comedy value.

There were also minor mentions in the scottish press, thanks to my scottish co-authors; in the Scotsman and Herald.

I have a chapter just out in a new book by Island Press, “Saving a Million Species“, exploring extinction risk from climate change. In it I address the evidence that past climates can explain past extinctions in the fossil record. I wrote this chapter a couple of years ago and this is a fast moving field so I would now have a lot to add to this, including some significant new general messages, but for what it’s worth, here’s the chapter. Read more…

Well, had another paper published today thanks to some diligent students, so thought I’d write a bit about it. This work addresses the question of whether life’s propensity to diversify is slowing down. Read more…

I have been encouraged by some readers to blog a bit more about what I do at work, so here’s a link that describes some recent research by Luke Tilley, a PhD student I co-supervised, about controlling shoreflies in glasshouse agriculture. Very satisfying stuff. Enjoy!